Monday, September 22, 2014

First White House Quilt Visits Quilts in Birmingham

September 10, 2014, I was privileged to visit the Birmingham Museum of Art with Mary Elizabeth Johnson Huff, Montgomery author and quilt expert, and Ryan Blocker, Textile Curator at the Alabama Department of Archives. We were guests of Graham Boettcher, Ph.D., the William Cary Hulsey Curator of American Art at the Birmingham Museum of Art, and two of his colleagues.

We took our baby quilt and they brought out their two quilts, one a gunboat quilt and one a baby quilt.. Our gunboat quilt is in a traveling exhibit as longtime readers of this blog know, but it was good to see three of the four quilts together and notice their similarities.

It was also fascinating to think that after so many years, the three quilts were reunited for a brief time. I wrote an article for the Alabama Heritage Magazine, Summer 2014 issue, on the conservation of our two quilts. It is titled "The Tale of Two Quilts: A Sesquicentennial Project".

I hope you will all make plans to visit the First White House of the Confederacy and see our baby quilt as well as all the other treasures we have in our wonderful House Museum!